Even Fox News Acknowledges Russia Hacked The Election

Sorry, Donald Trump, but even your BFFs at Fox News think it’s incontrovertible that Russia’s cyber attacks were designed to interfere in our election.

After Donald Trump blasted the CIA and its findings that Russia tried to sway the election his way, Fox News tacitly helped validate his claims by deliberately casting doubt on the intel. This, despite a national security expert telling Fox Viewers that the findings were, essentially, incontrovertible.

Nevertheless, we saw “objective” host Chris Wallace lead Trump through a series of questions that were thinly-veiledinvitations for him to attack the CIA’s credibility. Fox contributor John Bolton even suggested that the CIA had planted a false flag on behalf of the Obama administration. On the day that other news outlets reported on the bombshell that Vladimir Putin was reportedly personally involved, Megyn Kelly gave a friendly platform to Republican Congressman Peter King to attack the intelligence community for not appearing before the House Intelligence Committee (without any explanation as to why).

But last night, Fox’s chief intelligence correspondent, Catherine Herridge, acknowledged that Fox has “confirmed” that yes, Russia did try to interfere in the election. From the Media Matters’ transcript:

CATHERINE HERRIDGE: Fox News has independently confirmed that Russian-backed cyber militias were targeting US systems and influential US persons in the summer of 2015, and the operation evolved into an effort to interfere in the US election. These operations were sanctioned by the highest levels of the Russian government.

After the FBI director’s July statement about the Clinton email investigation, a government source says there was a reluctance to further insert government institutions and their assessments into an already deeply politicized election cycle. A leading cybersecurity expert says the intelligence community reviewed the techniques, tactics, and procedures leveraged in the attacks and made the link to Russia. In October, the agencies and Homeland Security, or DHS, went on the record, though Putin was not mentioned by name.

It’s worth pointing out that Herridge did not confirm that Russia was trying to help Trump get elected nor that Putin was personally involved. But hey, maybe she’ll catch up eventually.

Earlier that same day, Trump was still trying to cast doubt that Russia had done any hacking:

If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?

So should Herridge's report serve as a warning signal to Trump about the limits of Fox’s willingness to carry his anti-CIA water? Or just a situation where the network was forced to admit the truth in order to maintain some semblance of independence and credibility going forward? I report, you decide.

JM, I’ve got my fingers crossed for Monday too. A chance for the electoral college to act in the way the founding fathers had intended. As a firewall. There are a couple of ways this could play out if enough republican electors have second thoughts.

1) The republican electors are too chickenshit to actually vote for Hillary and vote for one of the third party candidates instead. Hillary instructs her electors to vote for THAT third party candidate in sufficient numbers, thus stopping Trump.

2)The republican electors actually nut up and vote for Hillary in sufficient numbers to stop Trump.

If republicans cry about this, they can go piss up a rope because this is EXACTLY constitutional. The Electoral College.